Interview With Gary Edwards of OpenOffice.org 173
silentbob4 writes "Hot on the heels of yesterdays interview of Sun's Florian Reuter posted on Slashdot comes a two page interview with OpenOffice.org's Gary Edwards. In this installment, Gary discusses the importance of open document formats and hints to the release date of OpenOffice.org 2.0: 'No one knows for certain when OpenOffice.org 2.0 stable will be released, but Mad Penguin's bet is that the stable 2.0 release will come before any recently purchased cartons of milk expire in your refrigerator.'"
I just hope... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:got milk? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a lot of IT managers already have taken note. Most people in IT understand that Microsoft doesn't play well with others, which leads to the idea that your best bet is either to use only Microsoft Office or not use Microsoft Office at all. However, there just aren't loads of options there. Microsoft Office is what most businesses use, so if you want to do business with them, you might want to stick with MS. Further, people are accustomed to Microsoft Office, so there's that issue.
Finally, and this is not unimportant, even though OOo might provide a viable alternative to most of MS Office, they don't offer an Outlook clone. Many businesses are flat-out addicted to Outlook for their scheduling. OOo might do well to integrate Evolution and help Novell port it to Windows/OSX.
Either way, I doubt that the real problem is that IT managers are oblivious to the vendor lock-in MS represents, but rather that the lock-in has already taken place, and now the question is, how do you get out? The answer may be to push MS to support OASIS.
Re:Fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I just hope... (Score:3, Insightful)
However, continuous waiting for the "X" release can make it seem like vapor-ware and lead to much frustration when it gets delayed for so long.
OK, I'll wait. It's free! It does what I want. If it needs to cook for a while, let it - I'd rather have it cooked all the way through instead of having to chew on half-done guk that I'll complain about...
It's not just the OpenOffice project that suffers. (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't have time to go digging through the Mozilla source to find out each and every little nuance that wasn't mentioned in the three-year-old documentation. So please, Mozilla and OpenOffice.org developers, provide us with some recent, useful documentation and examples! That is perhaps the greatest favour you could do at this time.
Non-free? (Score:5, Insightful)
While an OOo built with Gcj and Classpath is, apparently, legally unencumbered, the future of the language is uncertain. Some us would prefer, for a variety of reasons, to have OOo not dependent on Java for core features.
Why wait? (Score:3, Insightful)
market share (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a lot of old computers out there that have not been upgraded. Windows 98 is still common, though mostly for kids games these days. (The games don't run on the parent's XP system, but the next kid can enjoy it just as much as the first) Many offices are still running Windows 2000 on the desktop. (NT 4.0 is still a popular server platform, though it is dieing slowly)
Many home users are using OOo, because it is free and better than whatever came with their system. Many offices are still on Word 97.
The market share of those using the newest versions of Microsoft stuff is increasing, but there is a large amount of old stuff out there.
It is very hard to count marketshare. OpenOffice.org is a freedownload. How many have downloaded it once and installed on many machines? Many companies have a site license for Microsoft software, whatever comes with the PC is wiped when the machine arrives, and their version installed. Don't count the shipped version of software as in use. So nobody really knows what the true numbers are.
I agree that his numbers sound exaggerated, but I wouldn't call them bad without getting his justification for them. He might know what he is talking about.
Re:got milk? (Score:5, Insightful)
Spread the word and practice what you preach.
I believe the problem is not as much as people don't listen but the fact that people do not spread what they preach. As a business user, have you ever given an MS Office client an OO.org document? I know I haven't. Reason being is because the recipients do not have OO.org installed nor do they want to install it. And to force clients into downloading a >100MB file to read your document is preposterous!
What I believe is needed is a light-weight OO.org viewer that is quick to download and quick to open. Then we can give our clients OO.org documents and exclaim to them when they tell us they can't view it that we use OO.org due to its [insert fabulous reason here] and if they like they can download the free viewer here*. That or include the viewer or link with document. That way they know we use OO.org as we prefer the benefits it offers over those of MS and they are not forced to get something they're not comfortable ("opensource? my mcse guy said it's not free!")
*Said viewer should have link too full version so they have option of downloading OO.org
Re:got milk? (Score:5, Insightful)
If all you need is for the client to view the document, send a PDF. That's what PDFs are for, and it also diminishes the reliance on Microsoft. Best of all, almost everyone already has a PDF viewer installed.
Re:got milk? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm the only one who uses OO at work here (alongside Office) and I send out a lot of PDFs. I've had numerous people ask me how I do that especially when they know I don't have any of the Acrobat stuff...
Sadly they then say they wish Office had that and go about their day...
Re:Geez (Score:5, Insightful)
When Word 97 was released they claimed it could read/write Word 95 documents. They lied. Their "Word 95" export was really a munged RTF saver and it caused no end of headaches for Word 95 users. It wasn't fixed for months, until SP1 for Office 97 was released.
Try using Office 2003 to open MS Works or Office 4.x files and see what happens. If it even tries at all, you better hope it is a plain-Jane file with nothing fancy, or it is all going to be screwed up.
Most documents convert fine. Other can be handled the same way ANY legacy format has been handled in the digital age -- stop using it and keep a couple copies of the old software around just in case someone needs to access the legacy data. I've managed document transistions at a couple large companies moving from RF-Flow to Visio; Wordstar to WordPerfect to Word; Lotus 1-2-3 to Word; and dBase 3 to dBase 4 to Access 95, 97, 2000 then finally Postgres.
The arguments are always the same.
Q. "What about all my old data?"
A. "Batch convert what you can. Hand convert what you use, as you use it. Leave the old stuff to decay and keep a copy of the old software."
Hell, most times we also needed to set aside some old PCs with the old OS just to run the legacy software. CLIX, OS/9000, OS/2, Windows 3.11, DOS 4.1. We had a legacy document room with a bunch of old computers at one facility. It was a working museum.
THAT is why open document formats are important. To avoid the necessity of working museums.
-Charles
Re:Geez (Score:4, Insightful)
It benefits them to offer such documentation. (Score:4, Insightful)
In the case of Mozilla, it would greatly benefit them if their product were to be embedded all over the place. Of course, non-Mozilla developers need solid documentation and solid examples in order to learn how to embed Gecko. Such documentation and examples currently do not exist.
The same goes for OpenOffice. If these products want to be seriously used, then they will need to provide sufficient documentation. It's as simple as that. The price they're charging for their software is irrelevant.
Resumes (Score:4, Insightful)
I've especially had this problem with recruiters, since they like to re-format the resume and put it onto their standard letterhead and preferred layout. Since I know that, I'll generally try to get away with sending them an RTF, since it tends to be less dicey.
Distributing PDFs is a great idea, and if people were less anal about getting Word docs (many times as a matter of company policy or procedure), it'd work great.
Re:Geez (Score:3, Insightful)
It was November/December of 1997, so yes about 8 years ago. And I was working at a Fortune 500 company who's Executive VP (pre-CIO days) insisted on immediately upgrading half the company to Office 97 to "standardize". That was 3,000+ desktops on one version and 3,000+ on the older version. It was a damn nightmare for almost a year and that experience stuck with me.
It also stuck with Microsoft, because the Office 97, 2000, XP and 2003 formats are the same and didn't change. Yes, they introduced XML capabilities in 2003 but the default format was the 97/2000/XP one.
Now they're going to change again, this time to XML, and are making the same promises they did in 1997.
Since they are changing, now is the perfect time to try and force an open document solution. Better now than before getting locked into the next cycle.
But in practice, very few people moan about incompatibility issues.
Look harder. Google is your friend.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1631430,00.a
http://office-watch.com/office/archtemplate.asp?v
"...neurobiologist seeking data from the Viking probes sent by the United States to Mars in the mid-1970s was told by the US space agency that software to read the 25-year-old computer tapes no longer existed, and "the programmers who knew it had died," according to the scientist."
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=3902
And to top it off, Office 2003 has no less that six(!) different versions, of which only the top-end 2 can create XML formats. http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/04/23/deviant.html [xml.com]
People don't care about philosophy until it happens to them. Most are apathetic with the attitude "yeah, but what are the odds of that happening to me?" That attitude can NOT be let to rule the day.
Hell, my dad still has the disks he wrote his first book on. TRS-80 Model III, 5 1/4" floppies. And no earthly idea how to get the data off them, much less what format it is in.
Some manufacturing equipment is still controlled by software on OS/9000-based machines. Yes, they can read and write DOS-format floppies now. Of course, the driver for that is $2,500 per node-locked machine...
Sorry for the rant, but this is an important subject I've been burned by before.
-Charles